Overview:
The record of the bloody battle between the twelve proud warriors— The 12th Twelve Tournament that gets held every twelve years… Twelve brave warriors who bear the names of the signs of the zodiac fight each other for the lives and souls. The participants are twelve very strange warriors: “Rat,” “Ox,” “Tiger,” “Rabbit,” “Dragon,” “Snake,” “Horse,” “Goat,” Monkey,” “Rooster,” “Dog,” and “Pig.” The victor of this tournament gets to have one wish granted, whatever the wish may be. The one wish they want granted— Who will be the final survivor?
– From Crunchyroll
Review – Episode Spoilers Ahead:
Okay, seriously, how is this a whole series? This episode is told from the boar’s perspective and she gets to the venue, finds out the rules for the seemingly idiotic death match (I assume we’ll get some justification though this story does not seem big on rationalizing), the match starts, an alliance almost forms and after that someone blows up the floor and we see boar girl face off with bunny boy and then the one character the audience has had any chance to connect with is killed.
Um, right. So was I supposed to be interested in the other guys who may have combined spoken 100 words this episode? Am I meant to look forward to endless flashbacks of their traumatic childhood as they were prepped for this insanity?
Basically, other than ‘hey, cool death match’ this episode doesn’t do anything because the only characterisation they offered us ceased to be relevant by the end. The match itself isn’t actually interesting yet because other than vague ‘you’ll get a wish granted’ comment, there’s no actual motive or reason for this match. No motive, no characters to care about yet… it isn’t a great start.
Plus, they gave all the characters poison which will kill them in 12 hours. So each episode is going to be like an hour in real time and using flashbacks to fill in the rest of the run time (speculation)?
I guess there were supposed to be some shocks and gasps at some of the violence, gore, and trauma, particularly of the childhood the girl endured, but to be honest it all just kind of felt flat. It was more a shopping list of shocking imagery rather than an actual emotive viewing experience.
So, maybe this will draw me in more once I know some of the other characters, but my honest first opinion of this is it isn’t exactly getting me excited for what is to come. Which is kind of a shame because this is one I was kind of looking forward to. Oh well. I’ll give it another couple of episodes and then decide.
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Thanks,
Karandi James.
